September 6, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Participants in Spain’s first annual Crossroads walk, a cross-country march for the right to life, were confronted with a group of angry Greenpeace activists, who were peeved by the walkers’ pro-life position, according to organizers.

Passing through the Spanish city of León, where they were warmly welcomed by the town’s mayor, the walkers were noticed by Greenpeace members while they were passing out literature in Leon’s main plaza. Later, on their way back to the RV that accompanies them on their trek, the walkers were confronted by several of the Greenpeace activists, who wore identifying vests.

Walking up to them, “one of the activists spat on the walkers, while the rest began to yell out insults. ‘Sons of bitches, bastards!’,” and other epithets, according to Spanish Crosswalk leader Jaime Hernandez.

“The members of Crossroads ignored the insults and continued walking. The Greenpeace activists grew even angrier, the sight of a group of pro-life girls which had lagged behind seemed to enrage them and got them to yell ‘Long live abortion! We are pro-death!’”

“At that moment a young man from the first group turned around to accompany the girls and was threatened directly by one Greenpeace activist with the typically thuggish gesture of slitting one’s throat with the index-finger,” Hernandez relates. At that point, he said, the walkers decided to call the police, who soon arrived and took down descriptions of the Greenpeace activists.

The incident was the most troubling of the trip, which also saw graffiti spray painted on the RV, and the socialist lieutenant mayor of the town of Tordesillas ordering the police to prohibit the walkers from handing out literature, according to Hernandez.

Spain’s first annual Crossroads walk started in Barcelona on July 9th and ended on August 19 in Santiago de Compostela, the site of the burial of St. James the Apostle, one of the most visited pilgrimage sites in Europe. It ultimately attracted forty walkers, a huge success that Crossroad president James Nolan believes might explain the hostility encountered by the group.

Nolan told LifeSiteNews.com that the incident indicates that “the need for a Crossroads walk in Spain is self-evident,” and said that more of the same could be expected in the future, because “young people are becoming more and more pro life.”

“The pro-abortion groups don’t like that and we will continue to see this type of push-back as this trend grows, said Nolan. “As they begin to see that they have lost the youth, they will become more and more violent and their truly radical views will become more out in the open,” he noted, calling the first Spanish Crossroads walk “very successful.”

Crossroads began in the United States in 1995, and now includes four walks that begin on the west coast and end in Washington, D.C.. It has since spread to Canada, Ireland, and now Spain. It is a youth event open to people of both sexes up to the age of 30.